Bleeding

• Austin Kim, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2022

I knelt on the rocky grounds, piled with gravel, skimming through my knees as the thick glossy smell of fire waved through my nose as the grim grey sky showered tears above me. I heard no more screaming and silence and saw no more fighting. I could feel the wet blobs of water and blood staining my knees across the field, as stacks of clothing across the horizon black horizon contrasted on the corner of my eye. The area decorated trees as skinny as a single stick and rifles scattered around like dead leaves across the ground. The pale sky glazed on the field. I looked down. Knelt in a ditch. I started down at ragged clothing, with a face, the only one I could recognize. A ghastly tone shrouded his face as the face stared tirelessly towards the sky. It held him tightly in my arms. He was broken; his face looked like all others, lifeless. But I could still recognize it. His legs were snapped like a stick snapped in half as his coat blossomed cotton from within. I looked down at him. The once energetic and happy brother I grew up with was now parallel to himself.
"Jackson, wake up. It's ended. We can go now. We can eat our mom's pies again. Your friends are waiting for you!"
I shook him in my arms as his body ragdolled in my arms.
Frustration swam up my body as the dull sound of a clock ticking behind me, as a radio broadcast.
"Under the new report of the United States Defence Ministry- the war is over. Report back to your stations."
The radioman never answered, the other troops never went home, and nobody sang joyfully.
It was only me. But these men could have returned, they could have sung in joy, and my brother would be smiling if I had been here quicker.
These men never came back with me, they never woke up from their sleep, they never grew older, but I'm here, still waiting and bleeding.
Why are we still here?